Posts Tagged ‘hero’

The fact of the matter is that hating America’s soldiers is simply mainstream liberalism and mainstream Democrat Party ideology. They know it doesn’t sell given how they politically paid for their rodent behavior when they flung their own feces at returning Vietnam War veterans, and they know that they can’t let that ugly, diseased cat of theirs out of their bag.

MSNBC – you know, the most pro-Obama and pro-Stalin network of all – just told us how they feel about the troops via their mouthpiece Chris Hayes:

CHRIS HAYES: Thinking today and observing Memorial Day, that’ll be happening tomorrow. Just talked with Lt. Col. Steve Burke, who was a casualty officer with the Marines and had to tell people [inaudible]. Um, I, I, ah, [Steve] Beck, sorry, um, I think it’s interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words “heroes.” Um, and, ah, ah, why do I feel so comfortable [sic] about the word “hero”? I feel comfortable, ah, uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.

Yeah, happy Memorial Day to you to, Chris. You loathsome cockroach.

When I talk about liberalism as pseudo-intellectual snobbery, consider Chris Hayes my poster boy. “…Rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war“???? Seriously???? “Yes, he’s a quivering pile of treasonous slime. But doesn’t he sound smart being a quivering pile of treasonous slime? And isn’t that the thing that really matters?”

If you want to argue that this isn’t MSNBC’s position, let me put it this way. Chris Hayes shouldn’t have even been allowed to finish that rambling paragraph before an executive showed up on the set to shut off his microphone and tell him, “You are so fired right now it’s beyond unreal.”

“I think that we can say that the Constitution reflected the enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day and that the framers had that same blind spot.”

Obama – after all of his damnable apology tours on foreign soil where he confessed that America was the wrongdoer and our enemies were more righteous than we were – finally issued something of an apology that actually needed to be given:

Many of those who survived brutal fights in the Southeast Asian jungle faced derision when they got home in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of public opposition to that Cold War battle.

Some 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War, compared to 4,000 who were killed in Iraq and nearly 2,000 who have been killed so far in Afghanistan.

“You were often blamed for a war you didn’t start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor,” Obama told a crowd gathered at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, which lists names of those who died in the conflict.

“You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened. And that’s why here today we resolve that it will not happen again,” he said to applause.

WHICH FRICKING PARTY COMMITTED THAT NATIONAL SHAME, BARRY HUSSEIN??? Why don’t you take that one little extra step and say, “I, as a Democrat, am appalled by the abject disgrace of my own party toward our heroic warriors”???

Democrats turned the Tet Offensive – a complete military victory for the United States and an unmitigated military disaster for North Vietnam – into a complete political defeat for America. For Democrats, the humiliating pullout in shame from Vietnam was their greatest victory. It was from that slimepit that the modern Democrat Party was born.

And if Republicans had treated disease-carrying rats with the shame that Democrats treated our returning veterans during the Vietnam War, well, you can bet that Democrats would have demonized us for our cruelty to animals. It wasn’t Republicans who spat in the faces of our troops.

Just a brief exposure to an image of the American flag shifts voters, even Democrats, to Republican beliefs, attitudes and voting behavior even though most don’t believe it will impact their politics, according to a new two-year study just published in the scholarly Psychological Science.

What’s more, according to three authors from the University Chicago, Cornell University and Hebrew University, the impact had staying power.

“A single exposure to an American flag resulted in a significant increase in participants’ Republican voting intentions, voting behavior, political beliefs, and implicit and explicit attitudes, with some effects lasting 8 months,” the study found. “These results constitute the first evidence that nonconscious priming effects from exposure to a national flag can bias the citizenry toward one political party and can have considerable durability.”

This is why going to a July 4th/Independence Day parade makes people Republican:

Democratic political candidates can skip this weekend’s July 4th parades. A new Harvard University study finds that July 4th parades energize only Republicans, turn kids into Republicans, and help to boost the GOP turnout of adults on Election Day.

“Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation’s political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party,” said the report from Harvard.

If the mainstream media were anything other than leftwing propagandists, they would have ripped Obama as a man who was more “Bush” than Bush ever was (see also here). A few – as in a very, VERYfew – liberals have openly acknowledged that Obama has been a bigger trampler of civil liberties than Bush EVERwas. Including, by the way, ordering the execution of American citizens by Predator drone attack. The vast remainder of liberals are nothing more than utter hypocrites who only decry Republicans because they have no morality but only ideology.

The hostility of Democrats to the military that has defended this nation is merely one of the reasons why “Democrat” stands for “Demonic Bureaucrat.”

TUCSON, Ariz. – Grief-stricken after the Tucson supermarket massacre, shooting victim James Eric Fuller found comfort writing down the Declaration of Independence from memory while still recovering in the hospital.

The self-described liberal and military veteran became distraught Saturday, authorities said, when he began ranting at the end of a televised town hall meeting about the tragedy. He took a picture of a local tea party leader and yelled “you’re dead” before calling others in the church a bunch of “whores,” authorities said.

Deputies arrested him and called a doctor. They decided he should be taken to a hospital for a mental evaluation, said Pima County sheriff’s spokesman Jason Ogan said.

Then we found out about the conservative victim – described, in fact, as “very conservative” (and see also here from a different source) – Judge John Roll:

Last week he was called “fair” and “just.” Today, Judge John Roll, the federal judge killed in the Tucson shooting, is being called a hero.

Police say security footage from the Safeway store where the shooting occurred shows accused gunman Jared Loughner walking up to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and shooting here at close range — the video shows only a wisp of her hair, however. Loughner then turns and begins firing indiscriminately into the crowd.

“He wheels this direction and that direction firing,” Chris Nanos, a captain with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department who has viewed the video, told the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal explains what happens next in the video with 63-year-old Judge Rolls:

As the shooting starts, the video shows Judge Roll pushing another man, Rob Barber, onto the ground, Mr. Nanos said. “It looks to us as though he is pushing against Ron Barber to move him out of the way.” Both men fall to the ground; both are shot. The judge was shot in the back and died.

The New York Times quotes Richard Kastigar, another investigator in the case, in explaining the incident this way:

The judge guides Mr. Barber to the ground, shields him with his body, and then tries to push himself and Mr. Barber away from the gunman, who was no more than three to four feet away as he fired, Mr. Kastigar said.

“He pushes Mr. Barber with his right hand and guides him with his left hand. The judge was on top of him and is covering up Mr. Barber, literally lying on top of him, and his back was exposed,” Mr. Kastigar said.

“It’s pretty evident to me that Judge Roll was a hero … if Judge Roll had not pushed Mr. Barber his wounds might have been fatal,” Nanos told the Journal . “Judge Roll‘s actions are of a man trying to save another man’s life.”

I’m sorry to have to taint the memory of a great man like Judge John Roll – who should be celebrated as a magnificent example of a human being – by juxtaposing him with a liberal swine. But it’s time to start shouting down the left which has been screaming at us like the lunatics they are for decades.

Two hours after the shooting, liberal Paul Krugman wrote a piece essentially claiming that conservatives like Judge John Roll are hateful and evil. And he was guided entirely and exclusively by his hatred for his ideological opponents in that piece.

As long as Paul Krugman is allowed to express his propaganda and hate on pages of the so-called “newspaper of record,” I will be entirely justified in saying that liberals are vile. Because they support him and the so-called “journalists” like him.

Please don’t bother to criticize me from the political left unless you can document that you have publicly called for the New York Times to fire Paul Krugman.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Miep Gies, the office secretary who defied the Nazi occupiers to hide Anne Frank and her family for two years and saved the teenager’s diary not, has died, the Anne Frank Museum said Tuesday. She was 100.

Gies’ Web site reported that she died Monday after a brief illness. The report was confirmed by museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostar, but she gave no details. The British Broadcasting Corp. said she died in a nursing home after suffering a fall last month.

Gies was the last of the few non-Jews who supplied food, books and good cheer to the secret annex behind the canal warehouse where Anne, her parents, sister and four other Jews hid for 25 months during World War II.

After the apartment was raided by the German police, Gies gathered up Anne’s scattered notebooks and papers and locked them in a drawer for her return after the war. The diary, which Anne Frank was given on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life in hiding from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944.

Gies refused to read the papers, saying even a teenager’s privacy was sacred. Later, she said if she had read them she would have had to burn them because they incriminated the “helpers.”

Anne Frank died of typhus at age 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, just two weeks before the camp was liberated. Gies gave the diary to Anne’s father Otto, the only survivor, who published it in 1947.

After the diary was published, Gies tirelessly promoted causes of tolerance. She brushed aside the accolades for helping hide the Frank family as more than she deserved — as if, she said, she had tried to save all the Jews of occupied Holland.

“This is very unfair. So many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work,” she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press days before her 100th birthday last February.

“The Diary of Anne Frank” was the first popular book about the Holocaust, and has been read by millions of children and adults around the world in some 65 languages.

For her courage, Gies was bestowed with the “Righteous Gentile” title by the Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. She has also been honored by the German Government, Dutch monarchy and educational institutions.

Nevertheless, Gies resisted being made a character study of heroism for the young.

“I don’t want to be considered a hero,” she said in a 1997 online chat with schoolchildren.

“Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary.”

Born Hermine Santrouschitz on Feb. 15, 1909 in Vienna, Gies moved to Amsterdam in 1922 to escape food shortages in Austria. She lived with a host family who gave her the nickname Miep.

In 1933, Gies took a job as an office assistant in the spice business of Otto Frank. After refusing to join a Nazi organization in 1941, she avoided deportation to Austria by marrying her Dutch boyfriend, Jan Gies.

As the Nazis ramped up their arrests and deportations of Dutch Jews, Otto Frank asked Gies in July 1942 to help hide his family in the annex above the company’s canal-side warehouse on Prinsengracht 263 and to bring them food and supplies.

“I answered, ‘Yes, of course.’ It seemed perfectly natural to me. I could help these people. They were powerless, they didn’t know where to turn,” she said years later.

Jan and Miep Gies worked with four other employees in the firm to sustain the Franks and four other Jews sharing the annex. Jan secured extra food ration cards from the underground resistance. Miep cycled around the city, alternating grocers to ward off suspicions from this highly dangerous activity.

In her e-mail to the AP last February, Gies remembered her husband, who died in 1993, as one of Holland’s unsung war heroes. “He was a resistance man who said nothing but did a lot. During the war he refused to say anything about his work, only that he might not come back one night. People like him existed in thousands but were never heard,” she wrote.

Touched by Anne’s precocious intelligence and loneliness, Miep also brought Anne books and newspapers while remembering everybody’s birthdays and special days with gifts.

“It seems as if we are never far from Miep’s thoughts,” Anne wrote.

In her own book, “Anne Frank Remembered,” Gies recalled being in the office when the German police, acting on a tip that historians have failed to trace, raided the hide-out in August 1944.

A policeman opened the door to the main office and pointed a revolver at the three employees, telling them to sit quietly. “Bep, we’ve had it,” Gies whispered to Bep Voskuijl.

After the arrests, she went to the police station to offer a bribe for the Franks’ release, but it was too late. On Aug. 8, they were sent to Westerbork, a concentration camp in eastern Holland from where they were later packed into cattle cars and deported to Auschwitz. A few months later, Anne and her sister Margot were transported to Bergen-Belsen.

Two of the helpers, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman, were sent to labor camps, but survived the war.

Around 140,000 Jews lived in the Netherlands before the 1940-45 Nazi occupation. Of those, 107,000 were deported to Germany and only 5,200 survived. Some 24,000 Jews went into hiding, of which 8,000 were hunted down or turned in.

After the war, Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam and lived with the Gies family until he remarried in 1952. Miep worked for him as he compiled the diary, then devoted herself to talking about the diary and answering piles of letters with questions from around the world.

After Otto Frank’s death in 1980, Gies continued to campaign against Holocaust-deniers and to refute allegations that the diary was a forgery.

She suffered a stroke in 1997 which slightly affected her speech, but she remained generally in good health as she approached her 100th birthday.

Her son Paul Gies said last year she was still receiving “a sizable amount of mail” which she handled with the help of a family friend. She spent her days at the apartment where she lived since 2000 reading two daily newspapers and following television news and talk shows.

Her husband died in 1993. She is survived by her son and three grandchildren.

Will I be so brave, Lord, if the madness begins again (as I believe it will)?

It appears pretty clear that there is a concentrated effort to attack and undermine John McCain on his greatest strength as candidate for president: his military service and his war record. Wesley Clark became the latest Obama surrogate attempting to undermine McCain’s military record Sunday on CBS’ Face the Nation:

(CNN) — Retired U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark, a supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, on Sunday questioned whether Sen. John McCain’s military experience qualified him to be commander-in-chief.
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who ran for president in 2004, questioned John McCain’s qualifications Sunday.

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who ran for president in 2004, questioned John McCain’s qualifications Sunday.

The McCain campaign called for Obama to condemn the remarks.

The dust-up began with Clark’s appearance Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” where moderator Bob Schieffer asked him about his interview with the Huffington Post earlier this month.

In the interview, Clark said McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, was “untested and untried.”

When Schieffer asked to explain the comment, Clark said he was referring to McCain’s experience, or lack thereof, in setting national security policies and understanding the risk involved in such matters.

“I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility,” said Clark, a former NATO commander who campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.
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“He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say, I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not,” Clark said.

Schieffer noted that Obama did not have any of those experiences, nor had he “ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down.”

“Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president,” Clark said.

Clark’s comments are clearly part of a trend. Consider Democratic Senator and Obama surrogate Jay Rockefeller’s attack on McCain’s record in an April 8, 2008 interview with the Charleston Gazette:

Rockefeller criticized Sen. John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee for president. “Senator McCain does have a temper. But today, he speaks in a monotone on the campaign trail.”

Rockefeller believes McCain has become insensitive to many human issues. “McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit.

“What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn’t know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues.”

And we can also find Democratic Senator and Obama Surrogate Tom Harkin attempting to directly undermine McCain on the basis of his military background:

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin is catching grief for suggesting John McCain’s family history of military service makes the presumptive Republican presidential nominee unfit to be commander-in-chief.

Harkin, who has a history of embellishing his own military record, told Iowa reporters last week that McCain’s background as the son and grandson of Navy admirals creates a “dangerous” situation because he can only view the world through the prism of the military.

“He has a hard time thinking beyond that,” Harkin said, according to The Des Moines Register. “I think he’s trapped in that. Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous.”

The paper also quotes Iowa’s junior senator telling reporters, “It’s one thing to have been drafted and served, but another thing when you come from generations of military people and that’s just how you’re steeped, how you’ve learned, how you’ve grown up.”

There is clearly a continuing campaign trend going on here. Each of the attacks is aimed at a particular facet to undermine McCain on what ought to be his greatest strength.

Harkin suggests that McCain is so steeped in the military worldview that his judgment as a civilian Commander-in-Chief should be questioned. Harkin comes right out and calls McCain’s military background “dangerous.” Rockefeller cuts down McCain – a Navy aviator and fighter pilot who was shot down in Vietnam – as some kind of robotic high-altitude push-button killer who couldn’t care less about human life. And now we have Wesley Clark suggesting that getting shot down and ending up being tortured for 5 1/2 years doesn’t really amount to squat, and that his command of the Navy’s largest aviation squadron doesn’t amount to real leadership.

And yes – although I will not link to that kind of crap – I also found attacks directed at McCain’s military career that suggested that he attained his success because of his Navy admiral father, and that he cooperated with the North Vietnamese Army interrogators.

So Obama surrogates have left no stone unturned in attempting to undermine, throw dirt at, discredit, and insult John McCain’s war record and military career.

Now, I’m sure that liberals will point to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign and argue, “Republicans did the same thing to John Kerry!”

Well, no, they didn’t. The Swift Boat Veterans were just that – veterans. They served with John Kerry. And they responded to what they believed were distortions, exaggerations, and flat-out-lies by a man who had outraged them by turning on American servicemen and accusing them of war crimes during a career as a war protester that was actually longer than his career as a Navy officer. The fact of the matter is, the overwhelming majority of the men who served with John Kerry had a very different view of the man than the John Kerry (who put himself up for all his decorations) had of himself.

A Washington Post story on the Swift Boat episode by Michael Dobbs does a pretty fair job of sorting out the convoluted history and the claims and counter claims.

In any event, you don’t have a case of prominent Republicans attacking John Kerry’s war record and service the way you have of prominent Democrats doing such to John McCain. And, in order for the Obama surrogates “Swift Boating” of McCain to in ANY way be parallel to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth “Swift Boating” of John Kerry, you would have to have a similar overwhelming majority of men who actually served with – and rotted with in the Hanoi Hilton – John McCain. Do we have any such? Not even close.

While John Kerry couldn’t wait to mention what he hero he was and brought his “band of brothers” with him on the campaign trail to sing his praises, “John McCain rarely speaks about his experiences as a POW in Vietnam.”

But at least one man – who’s reputation is unimpeachable, has spoken out:

John McCain rarely speaks about his experiences as a POW in Vietnam, but one of his cell mates at the Hanoi Hilton on Thursday described some of the conditions and character traits that earned McCain the commendations he received for his war service.

Col. George “Bud” Day, 83, is the most decorated service man since Gen. Douglas MacArthur, with more than 70 medals. A living legend, Day was blown out of the sky two months to the day before the North Vietnamese shot down a propaganda prize, whose father and grandfather were renowned American admirals.

One of those 70 medals is the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I’ll take Bud Day’s account on John McCain over any other, thank you very much.

Another, more detailed account on John McCain’s military career, is found in an LA Times story. You’ve got to figure that the Los Angeles Times – which is decidedly leftist in its orientation – would have dug up whatever dirt they could have.

The story dings McCain wherever possible on minor points, but it begins this way:

THE POST-POW YEARS: FIRST OF TWO PARTS — When John McCain limped home from a Hanoi prison camp in 1973 with a badly injured knee that he could not bend, Navy doctors gave him the bad news: His 15-year career as a jet pilot was over. He would never fly again.

But McCain surprised his doctors by making a dramatic comeback. With a ferocious determination to fly again and a tough physical therapy regimen, he got his wings back and not long after was awarded command of the Navy’s largest aviation squadron, VA-174, at Cecil Field in Florida. Blue-chip connections in the Nixon administration helped.

These days, when the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is asked about his qualifications to lead and manage, he points to his command of that squadron as proof he has the right stuff to be president.

“I led the largest squadron in the United States Navy, not for profit, but for patriotism,” McCain said at a candidate forum in New Hampshire. “I’m proud of that record of leadership.”

McCain’s bravery during his 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war is a well-told story. But how he regained his career after the Vietnam War has received less attention in his autobiography and other writings about his life.

A review of Navy records and interviews with more than a dozen of his former colleagues paint a picture of a commander who was lionized by his troops as a war hero and respected by aviators as a fair and effective manager. He had rugged good looks and a common touch, and was fiercely loyal to those who worked for him, his former colleagues say.

There is no question: John McCain is a legitimate war hero. He suffered for his country as few men have suffered. And in his determination to return from trauma and injury to continue to serve his question leave no question as to his character and courage. Anyone who attempts to undermine such a man’s military record undermines himself. But there is little question now that Democrats and Barack Obama surrogates are out there doing everything they can to do just that.

And John McCain’s record – when compared to Barack Obama’s complete lack of a record – speaks for itself. John McCain’s service qualifies him as Commander-in-Chief. He has executive level leadership experience that Barack Obama clearly lacks. And John McCain’s lengthy career in the Senate likewise serves to further underscore the fact that one man has far more experience and credibility to serve as President than does Barack Obama.

Wesley Clark, Jay Rockefeller, and Tom Harkin’s attempts to undermine a genuine hero are genuinely despicable. And – when three Barack Obama surrogates come trickling out to attack McCain – it is more than worth asking as to what the Obama campaign’s role has been in this campaign to question, attack, and trivialize a clearly exemplary military career.

President Bush noticeably teared up as he honored Petty Officer Michael Monsoor for sacrificing his life for his Teammates. At one point he clearly could not speak. Not nearly as much of a “warmonger” as he’s frequently credited with being, I suppose.

Master of Arms Second Class Michael Monsoor was providing rear security for two snipers on a rooftop when an insurgent’s grenade was tossed at them. The grenade struck Monsoor in the chest and rolled toward his Teammates. Monsoor screamed “Grenade!” and threw himself on the explosive, sacrificing himself. He alone had a clear path of escape; he chose to save his teammates at the cost of his own life.

As President Bush said, “On Saint Michael’s Day — September 29, 2006 — Michael Monsoor would make the ultimate sacrifice. Mike and two teammates had taken position on the outcropping of a rooftop when an insurgent grenade bounced off Mike’s chest and landed on the roof. Mike had a clear chance to escape, but he realized that the other two SEALs did not. In that terrible moment, he had two options — to save himself, or to save his friends. For Mike, this was no choice at all. He threw himself onto the grenade, and absorbed the blast with his body. One of the survivors puts it this way: “Mikey looked death in the face that day and said, ‘You cannot take my brothers. I will go in their stead.'”

The words from Jesus in John 15:13 come to mind. “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”

President Bush’s words are far better than any I can offer. He continued:

“Perhaps the greatest tribute to Mike’s life is the way different service members all across the world responded to his death. Army soldiers in Ramadi hosted a memorial service for the valiant man who had fought beside them. Iraqi Army scouts — whom Mike helped train — lowered their flag, and sent it to his parents. Nearly every SEAL on the West Coast turned out for Mike’s funeral in California. As the SEALs filed past the casket, they removed their golden tridents from their uniforms, pressed them onto the walls of the coffin. The procession went on nearly half an hour. And when it was all over, the simple wooden coffin had become a gold-plated memorial to a hero who will never be forgotten.

For his valor, Michael Monsoor becomes the fourth Medal of Honor recipient in the war on terror. Like the three men who came before him, Mike left us far too early. But time will not diminish his legacy. We see his legacy in the SEALs whose lives he saved. We see his legacy in the city of Ramadi, which has gone from one of the most dangerous places in Iraq to one of the most safest. We see his legacy in the family that stands before us filled with grief, but also with everlasting pride.

Mr. and Mrs. Monsoor: America owes you a debt that can never be repaid. This nation will always cherish the memory of your son. We will not let his life go in vain. And this nation will always honor the sacrifice he made. May God comfort you. May God bless America.”

President Abraham Lincoln’s Nov 21, 1864 letter to a mother who lost five sons fighting for the Union are worthy of mention here.

“I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should
attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your
bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

Abraham Lincoln

Master At Arms Second Class Michael A. Monsoor, today your country honors your life and your sacrifice for laying your own life upon that hallowed alter. May your family and your Teammates overcome their grief at your loss and cherish your memory and your example. May all of us in some small way become better people, more willing to think of others more than we think of ourselves, because of what you did that day on 29 Sep 2006.

And we honor our Navy SEALs and all of our magnificent warriors in the combat zones, who sacrifice themselves for us every single day by volunteering to serve in a dirty, difficult, and dangerous environment. May your sacrifices ultimately be rewarded with a stronger America and a better world.